Londonist in your inbox

Plan your day ahead or read the day's London headlines with our daily emails.

Things to do in London (weekday picks sent at 7pm the night before)Londonist Daily (news and features digest, sent out at 5pm each day)Best of Londonist (weekly email, sent Sunday morning)The Weekend Guide (sent Thursday lunchtime)

Follow Londonist

National Restaurant Awards 2014: London Leads The Way

Best Restaurant: Gymkhana

London played host to the seventh annual National Restaurant Awards last night. In a sign of the city’s flourishing restaurant scene, the capital also managed to dominate the upper reaches of the list more fully than ever before.

The awards are hosted by trade publication Restaurant Magazine — who are also behind the World’s 50 Best Restaurants — and honour the one hundred best places to dine in the UK, as voted for by chefs, restaurateurs and food critics.

Last year, Marlow gastropub The Hand & Flowers took the top spot but this time round the out-of-town favourite was pushed to number four by a trio of London hotspots. Notting Hill’s The Ledbury came in at three, Shoreditch’s Clove Club at two, and Mayfair Indian Gymkhana took pole position. If you’re anything like us, you’ll quite like the fact that the UK’s best restaurant is officially a curry house. Albeit not your average one.

Marylebone’s Chiltern Firehouse, among the most talked-about new restaurants in the UK, and the place to be seen for celebs and foodies alike, made an impressive entry into the list at 17, just ahead of Heston’s Fat Duck at 18. The Dairy in Clapham came in at 24, and won the coveted Diner’s Choice award, it was also the highest-ranking south-of-the-river restaurant.

Dinner’s executive chef and Blumenthal’s right hand man Ashley Palmer-Watts was named Chef of the Year, while the ‘one to watch’ award for best new restaurant went to Lyle’s in Shoreditch. Tom Sellers’s Bermondsey-based Restaurant Story was the highest climber, rising from 95 to 25, Grain Store (28) in King’s Cross was given the title of Cocktail List of the Year, and Michel Roux Jr’s Le Gavroche (21) won Wine List of the Year.